


share the burden

by Ryah_Ignis



Series: Season 14 Codas [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 14x02 Coda, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 14:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16348628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryah_Ignis/pseuds/Ryah_Ignis
Summary: "Someone’s in his room.“Dean?”Cas has a can of Pledge in one hand and a cloth in the other, and he’s dusting.  Waiting for Dean to return, and he could kiss him right now–Well.  He could, if he were prone to thinking that sort of thing about Cas.  Which he isn’t.  At all."During 14x02, Cas helps both Winchesters learn to share the burden.





	share the burden

“I’ve got breakfast.”

Like every morning, Sam bites down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to break skin–there’s a callous there now–as he steels himself.  Mom has offered a thousand times to take over Nick duties, but Sam can’t bring himself to hand over responsibility. If he hadn’t let Ruby in, hadn’t killed Lilith, Nick would be a normal guy.  Wouldn’t have been dragged around by an archangel on and off for nearly a decade.

Besides.  It’s not like anyone else knows what it’s like to be tethered to the devil.  Well, aside from Cas. And sure, he’s made the offer too, but Sam still can’t let it go.  A part of him–well. He deserves this.

Nick doesn’t respond.  Most days, he doesn’t. At first, Sam thought he’d forgotten how to speak.  It wouldn’t surprise him. He’d only been possessed by Lucifer for a few _hours_ and getting control of his vocal chords again had felt strange.  But now he knows better. Nick just doesn’t have a lot to say, and that’s fine, too.

“Scrambled eggs,” Sam says, voice not even close to filling the silence. “Bobby’s specialty, apparently.  He adds hot sauce, but I wasn’t sure you wanted it, so it’s on the side.”

Sam sets the plate down.  The last three weeks, he hasn’t managed to get through one interaction without his hands tremoring, but so far, so good.  Baby steps, he supposes. His brain needed time to realize that this isn’t Lucifer.

At the sound of the plate on his bedside table, Nick wheels around and Lucifer _snaps._

The cup of orange juice in Sam’s other hand hits the floor and shatters.  Before he even realizes what he’s doing, his hands fly up, shield his face.  His eyes drop to Lucifer’s shoes, his head hangs, his shoulders slump. He makes himself as small as possible.

All in all, it’s a miracle he doesn’t drop to his knees.  Take that, Pavlov.

When his stomach stays where it is, his bones stay whole, his blood doesn’t boil, clarity returns.  It’s not him.

_It’s not him._

“Butter fingers?” Nick asks, confused eyes sliding from the spilled juice to Sam’s hands.  

They’re both shaking.  He shoves them in his pockets.

“I–I’ll go get a mop.”

He turns on his heel and does everything he can not to sprint out of the room.

* * *

Cas finds Sam standing in front of the closet with the cleaning supplies, breathing like he’s run a marathon.

“Sam?”

Sam flinches so violently that he actually smacks his hand against the side of the closet.  Cas takes a half step back, hands held in the air. Sam’s eyes drift shut.

“Sorry.  You startled me.”

Cas raises an eyebrow. “Seems like a little more than startling to me.”

Sam doesn’t say anything.  Instead, he reaches into the closet and pulls out a mop and a bucket.  Cas watches him as he straightens the bottles on the shelf.

Maybe he’s thinking the same thing–

Dean, grinning as he lead the way through a Walmart, plucking bottles off of the shelf as if he’d had the list planned out for years.  Cas swallows a lump in his throat as he remembers spring cleaning last year. Despite everything, Dean had still made time to wipe down every inch of the bunker.

Looking at the haunted look in Sam’s eyes, Cas doesn’t think they’re on the same page.

“Nick again?” he asks, once it’s clear that Sam isn’t going to broach the topic on his own.

“It’s nothing.”

He shuts the closet and starts down the hall back to that _room._ Cas can’t help but be glad that Nick rarely leaves it.  It’s ridiculous–Lucifer was always a bundle of light, a horrible true face to Cas–but he still can’t stand the sight of his shell of a vessel.

“Sam.”

Sam snaps, whirling on Cas so quickly that they both have to stop in their tracks. “It’s _nothing_ , Cas!  I’m working through it, all right?”

The obvious response rises to Cas’s mind–he’s clearly not doing a very good job–but it’s not worth arguing right now.  Instead, he reaches out, puts a hand on Sam’s shoulder. It’s tense beneath his fingers.

“Let me have the mop.”

Sam relents after a brief, half-hearted tug-of-war that Cas could have won in an instant if he’d wanted to.

“He’s a victim, Cas.” Free of the mop, Sam’s hand goes straight back to trembling. “A victim.”

Cas nods. “But you are, too.  You don’t have to carry this burden alone, Sam.”

Sam shakes his head, but he doesn’t move to take the mop back.  It’s a small victory. It has to count for something.

“Let me look after Nick and Jack when you go to track Michael,” Cas says. “He’ll feel my presence coming anyway.  You can take Mary and Bobby.”

Sam nods, shoulders straightening.  The moment of vulnerability vanishes, the chief returns.  Still, the tension doesn’t relent. Cas releases his grip on Sam’s shoulder.

“I want him back, too,” Cas says. “But you can’t take every responsibility on to yourself.  We need to share the burden.”

Sam nods, but Cas can tell it hasn’t sunk in.

Typical Winchester behavior.

“Just–put the mop back when you’re done.”

* * *

 

In the end, it takes the most egregious use of the puppy dog eyes since Sam was sixteen years old and wanted to take a girl to homecoming in the Impala to wrestle Dean into the car.

Every instinct he has is screaming to get as far away from his family as possible.  There’s a reason Michael flew him to this dumb, movie-set church, after all. A reason he gave Dean his freedom, such that it is.  He just can’t remember it.

But once the trap is sprung, you don’t need the bait.  He remembers that much.

Sam drives, Bobby sits shotgun.  Mom takes the backseat with him and grips his hand so tightly that she nearly cuts off the circulation.

A year ago, he would have killed for this moment.  Now, he just wants to be anywhere else.

Dean knows Sam’s guarded shoulders all too well–he doesn’t need to see his face to know that his brother is every bit as skeptical about this as he is.  For his part, Bobby shows off his suspicion in every line of his body. He keeps glancing over his shoulder, making sure that Dean’s eyes don’t have a blueish glint to them.

Mom fills the silence with soft idle chatter.  How he’ll love all the people in bunker, how they’ve been working on cleaning up some of the extra rooms he and Sam never use, how they’ve set up a monster tracking network to rival the Men of Letters.

He lets it wash over him, white noise to drown out the trepidation he can’t shake.  Michael has a plan. He knows it.

When they get to the bunker, Dean bolts for his room.  He blows straight past a guy with a man bun–a guy he’s never seen in his home, because why not, he’s already had everything familiar rifled through and turned over at Michael’s hands–and keeps going.

Someone’s in his room.

“Dean?”

Cas has a can of Pledge in one hand and a cloth in the other, and he’s _dusting_.  Waiting for Dean to return, and he could kiss him right now–

Well.  He could, if he were prone to thinking that sort of thing about Cas.  Which he isn’t. At all.

“Dean.”

And the Pledge is on the ground and Cas’s arms are around him and suddenly it’s all too much.  Dean pulls free and stumbles backwards, hands grabbing blindly at the knot of the tie around his neck.

Except he can’t get the stupid knot undone because his fingers haven’t been his own for three long weeks and what if Michael’s still there, still messing with him, just waiting for the right moment and he’s lead him directly where he wants to be–

“Dean.”

Cas’s hands catch his and pull them away from his neck.  Swiftly, he unties the knot, pulls the tie away. He undoes the top two buttons, too, so that Dean can breathe again.

Cas laughs, then, and it’s not the gummy smile Dean has teased out of him too few times.  It’s like a man who’s just had his lifetime sentence commuted and can’t quite believe it.

* * *

Cas lets the tie drop to the ground.  He’ll burn it later, maybe, or send it through the garbage disposal in the kitchen, or rip it up with his bare hands.  Right now, Michael doesn’t matter. Because the man in front of him is Dean.

“Cas, I–”

“You’re late,” Cas says, cutting him off.

He can’t hear an apology right now.

“Do you remember what you did, right before you said yes?” he asks.

Dean takes a step forward, closing the space between them.  Cas thinks about a poorly lit motel room, about _personal space, Cas_ , about the constant dance they do around each other.

“Yeah,” Dean replies, voice rough. “I do.”

Right now, nothing else matters.  Michael, Nick, Jack, they all fade away.  He can deal with them later. For one moment, the burdens can lift.

“Did you mean it?”

Dean nods. “I did.”

Slowly, telegraphing every moment so Dean can pull away if he wants to, Cas lifts a hand to his cheek.  Dean leans into it. Cas remembers all too well what it feels like to return to sensation after a long time locked away.  

This kiss is shorter than the first, but it’s not tinged with desperation this time.  Cas pulls away all too soon, not wanting to overwhelm him.

“I can’t stay,” Dean says after a moment. “I can’t endanger everyone here.  If he comes back–”

Cas silences him with a look. “You’re here now.  We share the burden.”

Dean doesn’t look any more convinced than his brother did, but he lets Cas take off the suit jacket and get him a step closer to being himself again.

And, really, that’s the best Cas can hope for.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Codas will be posting on Fridays now, but I'm still super excited about the season and interacting with all of you again!


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